Category Archives: Job Advertisements

Comments Off on Call for nominations for the Chair of the Murchison Widefield Array Executive Board

Applications close on Friday 1 December 3PM AEST

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is now seeking expressions of interest for the position of Chair of the Executive Board.

The Murchison Widefield Array

The MWA is a low-frequency radio telescope operating between 70 and 300 MHz. It is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia, about 350km northeast of Geraldton, Western Australia. The MWA is a pre-cursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The instrument is operated by a consortium of 21 institutions from Australia, Canada, China, Japan, New Zealand and the United States led by Curtin University in Australia. The MWA Collaboration currently comprises some 230 individual scientists and engineers and spans a range of scientific and technical research programs in low frequency radio astronomy.

Further details of the project can be found at www.mwatelescope.org

Governance

The MWA is governed by an Executive Board comprised of an independent Chair and 10 Board members drawn from the MWA member countries (4 from Australia, 2 from China, 1 each from Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States). The role of the Board is to oversee policy and provide strategic direction for the Collaboration. The Board, and in particular the Chair, have a close working relationship with the MWA Director, Program Manager, Principal Scientist and Principal Engineer.

Role of Chair of the Board

The Board is seeking a Chair to facilitate the operation of the MWA Collaboration for 2018. The appointment is for one year, with the possibility of annual renewal. Ideally the appointment will commence in January 2018, though flexibility in the start date might be required. As per the new MWA Phase II agreement, which is pending ratification, the Chair can either be drawn from the elected representatives of the Board, or as an independent Chair appointed externally from a member country.

The role of the Chair encompasses the following:

. Providing high-level strategic guidance for the project, including leadership on the implementation or revision of collaboration policies.
. Ensuring the smooth functioning of the MWA Collaboration by working with national consortia in MWA member countries on their institutional membership, internal policies and future engagement with the project.
. Negotiating the MWA membership terms for new and renewing MWA members as the project continues to expand.
. Arranging and chairing meetings of the Board. These include two full-day face-to-face meetings in June and December, as well as 1-hour teleconferences on a monthly basis. The Chair is required to attend the face-to-face meetings in person. The locations of these meetings will be in MWA member countries.
. The role is approximately a 0.1 FTE time commitment, though the workload is variable and requires some flexibility. The position is not remunerated and has historically been filled largely by individuals whose current employer consider such positions as part of their workload.

Eligibility Requirements:
. Familiarity with international astronomical collaborations is essential.
. The Chair must possess the ability to work with a culturally diverse collaboration of geographically distributed individuals.
. The Chair must reside in one of the MWA member countries: Australia, Canada, China, Japan, New Zealand or the United States.
. The Chair must not be an employee of Curtin University, but there are no other restrictions on employment status.
. The MWA is a culturally diverse collaboration and the Board strongly encourages applications from minorities and women.

Nominations Process

Expressions of Interest and a brief CV outlining relevant experience (no more than 3 pages) should be sent to the current Chair, Melanie Johnston-Hollitt (Melanie@PeripetySci.com), by 3PM AEST December 1, 2017. Late applications will not be accepted.

Questions regarding any aspect of the role may also be directed to the current Board Chair.

Comments Off on Postdoc position in Time Domain Astrophysics at Purdue University

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University invites applications for a postdoctoral position to collaborate with Prof. Dan Milisavljevic on research topics connected with Time Domain Astrophysics.

The successful applicant will lead and be engaged in multiple active projects investigating the explosion mechanisms, progenitor stars, compact object remnants, and environmental impacts of core-collapse supernovae. Desirable skills include: familiarity with general techniques of UV/optical/IR imaging and spectroscopy; experience analyzing data from an array of space- and ground-based observatories (including HST, Chandra, VLA, Gemini, Magellan); expertise in data science or data visualization; and/or a background in theoretical simulations.

Purdue University has a strong astrophysics group and presently maintains partnerships with several major facilities including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the WIYN 3.5m telescope, VERITAS, and XENON1T. Purdue University is also a world leader in high performance scientific computing and data storage facilities.

The position is for two years, renewable for a third year upon mutual agreement. The negotiable starting date is September 1, 2018. Candidates must have a Ph.D. in astronomy, physics, or equivalent, by the date of appointment. Salary is highly competitive, and candidates will be eligible for health benefits including major medical, vision, and life insurance. Purdue University’s benefit package is summarized at: www.purdue.edu/hr/Benefits/. The Faculty and Staff Handbook, which is updated annually, is also available online at http://www.purdue.edu/faculty_staff_handbook/.​

All materials and inquiries should be sent by email to dmilisav@purdue.edu. The application package must be submitted as a PDF and include a cover letter, CV, list of publications, and a statement explaining research interests and qualifications. Three letters of support should also accompany each application and be submitted directly by references with the applicant’s full name in the header.

Review of applications will begin immediately after the deadline and will continue until the position is filled. For full consideration, all application materials should be received no later than December 15, 2017.

Purdue University provides ample support and resources for career development, and is an EEO/AA employer fully committed to achieving a diverse workforce. All individuals, including minorities, women, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply.​

INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE ASTROFÍSICA, ÓPTICA Y ELECTRÓNICA DEPARTMENT OF ASTROPHYSICS
Postdoctoral Research Assistant
(1 appointment, fixed term)
MXN$ ~280000 per annum (USD ~15000), tax free
The Department of Astrophysics at Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE, www.inaoep.mx) invites applications for a postdoctoral research assistant position in the area of millimeter astronomy to work on the CONACyT project led by Dr. Itziar Aretxaga entitled “Deep panoramic surveys at 1.1/1.4/2.1mm with the new polarimetric camera TolTEC”.

INAOE is the leading Mexican partner in the operation of the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT, www.lmtgtm.org), now in scientific operation. TolTEC (http://toltec.astro.umass.edu/), the new imaging camera of the LMT is currently under development and is expected to be deployed to the telescope at the end of 2018.
A large fraction of the research undertaken by the assistant is expected to be based on data acquired with this facility. The candidate is expected to contribute in the planning of the public surveys approved and to contribute to the development of the analysis pipeline, as part of an international team of researchers from INAOE and other Mexican institutions, the universities of Massachusetts-Amherst, Michigan, Northwestern, Arizona State, Wisconsin and Cardiff and NIST. The public surveys of the LMT will include a set of embedded areas of the galactic and extragalactic sky to unprecedented depths and angular resolution (http://toltec.astro.umass.edu/science.php).
The appointment is for 1 year commencing from January 2018, renewable to 1 extra year contingent on performance, and is based at INAOE, Tonantzintla, Pue., Mexico.
The successful candidate should have a PhD awarded within the previous 5 years in a relevant area of astronomy or astrophysics, and should have a demonstrated capacity for independent work. Desirable skills include proficiency in development of scientific coding preferably in C++ and python and experience with Data Mining and statistics, scientific interest in star formation, galaxy evolution or large scale structure of the Universe.
Applications must be written in English, and be emailed as PDF files to itziar@inaoep.mx
before December 1st, and include:
– Cover letter addressed to Dr. Itziar Aretxaga
– Curriculum vitae, including current address, nationality, age, and date of PhD
– Description (max. 10 pages) of research interests
– Complete publication list, with a maximum of 5 papers particularly relevant to the application highlighted
– Full contact details of 3 professional references, and arrange for letters to be sent to the same address before the deadline.

Comments Off on Postdoc Positions in Galaxy Formation and Evolution with JWST

We invite applications for two postdoctoral positions to work with the 200-hour James Webb Space Telescope Guaranteed Time Observer extragalactic program of the JWST NIRISS Instrument Science Team. This campaign targets lensing clusters with multiple JWST instruments to study a range of topics in galaxy evolution. We expect that one position will be located at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, and the other at Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics, National Research Council, in Victoria, Canada.

The JWST Near-IR Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) provides R~150 slitless grism spectroscopy over 1 to 2.5 microns for every object in a 2.2×2.2 sq arcmin field of view. Soon after JWST launch in early 2019 our NIRISS team will devote 200 hours of guaranteed observing time to the CANUCS program, whose primary component is NIRISS spatially-resolved spectroscopy of thousands of galaxies in fields lensed by massive intermediate-redshift galaxy clusters. This will produce maps of key physical quantities such as stellar populations, ionized gas, metallicity, dust, etc. This slitless spectroscopy program will be supported by extensive imaging and multi-slit spectroscopy with JWST’s NIRCam and NIRSpec instruments, and by existing multi-wavelength datasets. Key science possible with these data will range from studies of galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization, to those at the peak of cosmic star formation at z~1-3, to galaxy populations in massive z~0.5 clusters. For a brie
f description of the CANUCS GTO program, see: http://bit.ly/2yYA9PX

The postdoctoral fellows will first contribute to the development of a comprehensive data simulation and reduction pipeline and will be subsequently involved in the scientific analysis of this exceptional dataset. There will be significant scope for defining and leading scientific investigations within this program. The fellows will also have time for independent research and will be able to apply for Canadian time on ALMA, CFHT, Gemini, Astrosat, JCMT, and JWST.

The appointments are expected to start in or around September 2018 and are expected to be for three years, subject to satisfactory performance. Experience with the analysis of optical/IR extragalactic data is essential, while experience with IR spectroscopy and/or data pipeline development will be considered an asset. Applicants should submit a CV, a statement of research interests and accomplishments, and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent separately to the email address below. The application material should ideally include a description of the scientific investigation(s) that the applicant would be interested in performing using the JWST GTO dataset.

The review of applications will begin on 15 December 2017. All materials should be sent electronically to JWST-GTO@ap.smu.ca and addressed to Drs. Marcin Sawicki and Chris Willott. Any inquiries about these positions may also be sent to the same address.